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I thought I’d try and continue in the spirit of an earlier entry and doing another ambient soundscape type of a thing this week.
This tune had it’s start over a year ago when I put together something on a rainy Christmas Day. I was going for something moody and ethereal, but it wasn’t working, though I’d found a few sounds that I liked. In particular was a church organ type of sound that I was getting out of the u-He Tyrell N6. It’s augmented here with the Martinic Combo V, and lots of reverb. The driving force behind the piece is really the 16-note ostinato synth pattern, which is being layered by a number of synths: Chip32, Oki Computer in Reaktor (and a time stretched loop of the same sequence played as 32-notes), AAS Acoustic Strum, and Scarbee Mark I Rhodes. I was shooting for that cheesy 8-bit vibe with the Oki line. It reappears later in the piece on top a series of actual chord changes as well. The secret weapon is the soundscape generated on NI Reaktor with Metaphysical Function. I layered two tracks of noise that came out of this thing. Some other plugs:
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Lagging behind over here lately, on account of school and other contract work. Also, it seems that I’ve run out of space on my free SoundCloud account, so I’ll instituting a change of venue for storehousing the song files. Kind of a drag, since SoundCloud can tell me how many plays I get and all. Oh well….guess I’ll have to pony up and start actually paying for the service. In the meantime, my latest offering was borne out of a rainy Sunday afternoon stuck inside, doing my best to put off doing actual work. I felt obligated to put “rain” in the title, and now that I think about it, I guess I was giving my actual work a “raincheck” so to speak. Anyway, I was trying to go for a more upbeat, groove-oriented fusion vibe for this tune. I’ve been listening to a lot of gospel stuff lately (Kirk Franklin, Richard Smallwood, etc.), and I was hoping for some of that to influence me somehow. Not sure it did, but I was thinking about the syncopation in that music and how I might emulate in a tune. Again, I was trying to be a guitar player….I should just start apologizing for that up front. I do have plans of tracking a real guitar part in the places where you hear “synth guitar”, so just bear with me. Also had a time programming the drums. I should probably take a class on it or something. Some items of note: found a pretty cool compressor plug called Molot by vlagd/sound, which I used on a buss for the drums and bass. Also broke out the ES1 for the bass synth, which I’m really digging. Two others I don’t mess with too much were the EVD6 and Ticky Clav by Big Tick Audio, both of which added a lot during the “funk synth solo” section. Most everything else are stock plugs that I use pretty much all the time:
This week’s offering is more of an ambient soundscape than an actual song. I thought about developing the main motif a bit, but decided against it.
I ran across a site called freeSFX that has some great sound effects, which is where I found most of the ambient airport background noise and laughing kids and stuff. I also used a VST plugin produced by Tweakbench called Field, which has some need ambient sound effects. Another cool synth I pulled out is Plucked String by Synapse Audio (makers of Orion). It really doesn’t sound like a guitar, but it does sound pretty cool. Finally, I used Reaktor Spark (NI) for the sequenced 8th-note bass synth, and SynthMaster by KV331 Audio for the spacey pad sound heard throughout.
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Pat Strawser
Musings about keyboards, synthesizers, and music in general. Archives
March 2019
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